An underground vault fire and/or an explosion caused a power outage Sunday evening starting at around 6:30 p.m. which affected 1,400 PG&E customers in SOMA and shut the lights on the Bay Bridge. ABC7 also lost power in their studio momentarily during their 6 p.m. broadcast. The lights on the bridge remained off most of the evening, but there was no reported interruption in traffic flow. The explosion/fire took place at 2nd and Harrison, and the cause isn't known. Looks like it's underground explosion season again! more ›

Due to this storm thing that's happening outside, about 26,000 PG&E customers lost power between last night and this morning. Of those, the majority are on the peninsula and in the South Bay, with only about 500 customers powerless in the East Bay and 100 or so in SF proper. Also, as ABC 7 reports, the storm(s) and high surf are causing erosion concerns along several bluffs in the Bay Area, and there have been a bunch of traffic accidents and various reports of flooding as well. Welcome back to winter, everyone! more ›

Emergency_In_SF and AlertSF report that there are an estimated 4,700 to 4,800 customers without power in Potrero and Bayview. "PG&E en route with no estimated time for fix." more ›

Some photos from the lightning strikes this morning that took out transformers at Octavia & Grove and at Broderick and Sacramento, as well as the aftermath. And commenter Zac points us to a great piece of audio of that boom. ALSO: A new photo sent to us from Matt Baume of a duct-taped glass ceiling at the Academy of Sciences and a big patch of wet floor, which may or may not have been connected. more ›

Excuse us if we're a little groggy -- but yeah, how about that thunder this morning! Turns out there was at least one lightning strike (that enormous boom everyone near downtown heard around 8:30) to a transformer near Grove and Octavia, causing a power outage. SF Appeal has a tipster who notes another transformer hit at California and Broderick causing folks in Pacific Heights to lose power. The Mercury News (the Chron is still hungover and sleeping it off) reports that the earliest outage affected 36,000 homes, and power remains out for about 500 homes. The thunderstorm, which was mostly a "dry lightning" storm but we saw some rain here, caused a few grass fires up north too. P.S. If it hadn't been for catching the weather last night, and it being September 12th, we totally would have leaped out of bed in terrorist attack mode. more ›

Last night in San Francisco's notoriously gay Castro neighborhood, 2,8000 were rewarded with forgiving, soft candlelight after a power outage hit the area for about an hour or so. The cause of the outage? A Mylar balloon. According to reports, "PG&E spokesman Andrew Souvall said the outage happened around 7:50 p.m. when a Mylar balloon hit electric wires." What's more, "[t]he incident caused a manhole cover to dislodge at Market Street and Duboce Avenue." [insert manhole/Castro joke here] Power was restored to the area around 9 p.m. more ›